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Improving the Usability of Archaeological Data through Written Guidelines
Get PDFArchaeologists frequently use written guidelines such as site manuals, recording forms, and digital prompts during excavations to create usable data within and across projects. Most written guidelines emphasize creating either standardized datasets or narrative summaries; however, previous research has demonstrated that the resulting datasets are often difficult to (re)use. Our study analyzed observations and interviews conducted with four archaeological excavation teams, as well as interviews with archaeological data reusers, to evaluate how archaeologists use and implement written guidelines. These excavation team and reuser experiences suggest that archaeologists need more specific best practices to create and implement written guidelines that improve the quality and usability of archaeological data. We present recommendations to improve written guidelines that focus on a project\u27s methods, end-of-season documentation, and naming practices. We also present a Written Guidelines Checklist to help project directors improve their written guidelines before, during, and after fieldwork as part of a collaborative process. Ideally, these best practices for written guidelines will make it easier for team members and future reusers to incorporate their own and others’ archaeological data into their research.
Los arqueólogos utilizan con frecuencia pautas escritas como manuales de sitio, formularios de registro y pautas digitales durante las excavaciones para crear datos utilizables dentro y entre proyectos. La mayoría de las pautas escritas enfatizan la creación de conjuntos de datos estandarizados o resúmenes narrativos, sin embargo, investigaciones anteriores han demostrado que los conjuntos de datos resultantes a menudo son difíciles de (re)utilizar. Este estudio analiza observaciones y entrevistas realizadas a cuatro equipos de excavación arqueológica, así como entrevistas a reutilizadores de datos arqueológicos, para evaluar cómo los arqueólogos utilizan e implementan pautas escritas. Las experiencias de estos equipos de excavación y reutilizadores sugieren que los arqueólogos necesitan prácticas óptimas más específicas para crear e implementar pautas escritas que mejoren la calidad y usabilidad de los datos arqueológicos. Este artículo presenta varias recomendaciones para mejorar las pautas escritas que se centran en los métodos del proyecto, la documentación al final de la temporada y las prácticas de denominación. Los hallazgos muestran que tanto las prácticas de datos estandarizados como interpretativos son necesarias para crear datos consistentes, comparables y comprensibles. Además, el artículo incluye una Lista de verificación de pautas escritas para ayudar a los directores de proyectos a mejorar sus pautas escritas antes, durante y después del trabajo de campo como parte de un proceso colaborativo. Idealmente, estas mejores prácticas para las pautas escritas facilitarán que los miembros del equipo y los futuros reutilizadores incorporen sus propios datos arqueológicos y los de otros en su investigación
Confronting Whiteness: When Critical Whites Studies and Racial Trauma Collide: An Autoethnography
Get PDFThis autoethnographic dissertation research explores Critical White Studies (CWS) and racial trauma and their impact on Students of Color in a higher education setting. This study aims to challenge the deficit thinking of white educators who perpetuate racism in higher education. The relationship is examined to dismantle the white ideology of white educators who believe they have the same experiences of their Students of Color regardless of their own similar experiences. Through personal narratives the author will share the complexity of CWS and Racial Trauma. The findings suggest white educators need to examine their white identity and become culturally responsive to the needs and experiences of Students of Color. In this text, the author purposefully capitalizes “Persons of Color,” “Students of Color,” “Black” and “Racial Trauma” as a tribute to those who have endured Racial Trauma across history. Conversely, the word “white” is intentionally written in lowercase to distance it from its historical association with power and supremacy
Is it More State than Trait? Within-person Variability and Inter-rater Agreement of Feedback Orientation
Get PDFFeedback is a critical component of almost all performance management systems (Aguinis, 2009), and is often positively associated with individual and organizational effectiveness (e.g., Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Kim et al., 2016). Given this, researchers and practitioners have long sought to understand how and when feedback is likely to be most effective. Some promising new work has explored feedback orientation (FO), which describes a person’s overall receptivity to performance feedback (Linderbaum & Levy, 2010; London & Smither, 2002). Initial research has shown that FO is positively associated with feedback seeking (Dahling et al., 2012; Whitaker et al., 2012) and feedback reactions (Braddy et al., 2013), as well as job performance (Dahling et al., 2012; Whitaker et al., 2012) and contextual performance (Whitaker et al., 2012). The current studies add to our understanding of FO by testing some core assumptions of the construct. The first study used an ESM approach to establish that self-report FO is consistent across time and situations, supporting the assumption that it is a relatively stable individual difference. The second study examined multisource ratings of FO, finding that both peer and direct-report ratings are positively associated with supervisor-rated performance. However, there was low agreement between self and other FO ratings, and self-ratings were not significantly related to performance. Combining this with other research, this suggests that FO leads to positive performance if the value placed on feedback results in feedback-related behaviors. Taken together, the results of this study support the conceptualization and use of FO as a stable individual trait and establish that self-ratings do meaningfully differ from other-source ratings
Some Wounds Don’t Heal: Spirit Assassination Attempts: Tools of White Supremacy
Get PDFABSTRACT The purpose of this research was to study the effects of spirit assassination attempts and whether their influence is enduring throughout life and can be linked to my emotional, mental, and physical health. In 1987, the term spirit murdering was coined by Williams to describe the everyday encounters with racism and discrimination, which can evoke a profound sense of powerlessness, hopelessness, and sadness in Black people. I use the term spirit assassination attempts to describe the repeated, intentional words, body language, looks, and actions intended to remind Black people of their societal position intended to destroy hope, joy, and self-esteem and take away dignity and respect. Spirit assassination attempts are wounds whose cumulative effect can lead to spirit murdering. The Color of Mind and critical race theory comprise the theoretical base of this research. This autoethnography provides a personal look into my struggles to counter the negative perception of Black inferiority and the complexities and consequences involved in navigating life in a racist society. Reasons for the failure of mental health services to the Black community are discussed. This study validates The Color of Mind\u27s tenet that the achievement gap is intentionally constructed and maintained and critical race theory’s tenet that race is infused in all aspects of life. Keywords: Spirit assassination, spirit murdering, racial trauma, White supremacy, toxic stress, culture conflict, racis
Convening the Counter-Conversation: Critical Participatory Action Research Against Real-Time Repression
Get PDFThis dissertation presents the anti-fascist Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) process of three doctoral student participants/co-researchers, all practicing educators, with varied experiences in public and private education at the middle school, high school, and collegiate level. This research examines the convergence of the participants/co-researchers in response to their shared concerns about ascendent authoritarianism and rising repression and the subsequent formation of this study’s in-process CPAR research collective organized to critically counter, rather than reiterate, this repression.
Enacting the theoretical/methodological frameworks of Critical Theory and Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, the participants/co-researchers dialogically determined contemporary fascism to be the focus of this study and elected to conduct CPAR as a means to further investigate fascism within the collective local context of St. Louis schools. Seeking to put theory into practice, the research collective engaged the emergent, people-powered, possibilities of CPAR as a counter to fascism.
The research collective recorded and transcribed their CPAR meeting conversations as the primary source of evidence analyzed for this study. Implementing a collaborative-polyvocal-autoethnographic approach, thematic analysis reveals a Freirean-Fromm counter-frame of death or life—Fascist Necrophily problem—Anti-Fascist Biophily counter. Honoring the anti-oppressive aims of CPAR, implications for further anti-fascist actions are considered
A Most Despicable Hoax: Women, Crime, and Newspapers in Depression-Era St. Louis
Get PDFThis paper delves into the captivating saga of Nellie Muench, a St. Louis housewife whose life intersected with the burgeoning celebrity culture, evolving media landscape, and shifting gender dynamics of the early 20th century. Muench\u27s involvement as a co-conspirator in the 1931 kidnapping for ransom of a wealthy doctor propelled her into the spotlight, where she navigated media manipulation to attempt to craft her own narrative. Secretly obtaining a baby and passing it off as her own child to gain jury sympathy and blackmail a rich paramour took interest in her case to sensational tabloid (and legal) heights. Drawing from newspaper coverage, private correspondence, and Muench\u27s own writing, this analysis reveals how she was portrayed not merely as a criminal but as a new type of celebrity, challenging traditional archetypes of women in the public eye. Sections of the paper dissect various aspects of Muench\u27s life and the broader context in which she operated. This includes an overview of the Muench saga from its origins to her post-kidnapping endeavors, a discussion on crime and celebrity culture in the era, an exploration of Depression-era womanhood and its portrayal in media, and an analysis of Muench\u27s strategic media interactions. Her adept manipulation of roles — from glamorous New Woman to modest motherhood — illustrates the complex interplay between personal agency and societal constraints faced by women during this transformative period. This paper underscores the multidimensionality of Nellie Muench\u27s story, portraying her not just as a criminal or a victim of circumstances but as a shrewd navigator of the evolving celebrity landscape, offering insights into the intersections of gender, media, and fame in early 20th-century America
Unraveling Biases and Customer Heterogeneity in E-commerce Recommendation Systems
Get PDFThis research explores the biases present in AI algorithms within e-commerce recommendation systems, focusing on how these biases prioritize popular, sponsored, and private-label products over actual customer preferences. We extend the responsible AI discourse by critically examining these biases and their implications for fairness in e-commerce. To strengthen the current understanding of AI fairness in the fields of information systems and computer science, we aim to challenge the assumption that AI fairness is objective and the same for everyone. We examine how individual differences, such as equity sensitivity and exchange ideology, contribute to users\u27 varied perceptions of AI fairness. Through a factorial design survey, we find that customers perceive popularity bias as less unfair than sponsored or private-label biases, indicating a possible preference for conformity or \u27herd behavior.\u27 Further, our findings support the influence of exchange ideology, as individuals with higher levels of this trait tend to view recommendation systems as more unfair. However, we did not find similar empirical support for equity sensitivity trait. Finally, we find that perceived fairness negatively influences the distrust towards the recommendation systems. Our findings emphasize that addressing customer fairness perceptions is vital for mitigating distrust and enhancing the effectiveness of these systems. We conclude by discussing the theoretical contributions to the literature on AI and organizational justice and practical recommendations for improving the fairness of AI recommendation systems in e-commerce
Finding Combinatorial Patterns in Real Valued Omics Data
Get PDFPrecision medicine is a healthcare approach which tailors disease prevention and treatment to an individual, based on their genetics, environment, lifestyle, and physiological state. These factors interact to produce biological changes that can be measured to produce data called omics, and include genomics, lipidomics, and proteomics. Despite the abundance of omics data and analysis techniques, researchers still struggle to identify biological findings that replicate across data sets and translate into clinical applications. In this dissertation, we employ combinatorial optimization techniques to improve upon three steps in the precision medicine analysis pipeline: 1) data cleaning, 2) community detection, and 3) feature selection. Real-world data sets are often messy, containing missing values, erroneous measurements, and repeated entries. To better prepare these data sets for analysis, we introduce a data cleaning suite called Mr. Clean that removes missing elements, while maximizing the amount of valid data kept. Within Mr. Clean, we include exact approaches and high quality greedy methods. After the data has been cleaned, community detection and feature selection can be used to identify biologically significant patterns. In biology, networks are used to represent several relationships, including gene co-expression, gene regulation, and signaling pathways. Community detection is used to identify analytes in these networks that exhibit combinatorial relationships. To better identify communities of biological relevance, we further develop the Sieve objective function, which is tailored to large, sparse networks. Additionally, we develop an exact algorithm and approximation algorithm for community detection based on maximizing Sieve. In addition to inferring combinatorial relationships from a network, we can directly search for combinations of features associated with a disease. Identifying the most useful combination of features from the billions or trillions of possibilities is called feature selection. Using both greedy and exact algorithms, we develop a feature selection technique based on the Youden J Statistic. We demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for selecting features for general classification and subtype identification. Finally, we report on biological insights gleaned from our approach, particularly in the areas of Alzheimer’s Disease and COVID-19
Improving Mental Health Outcomes for Amputees
Get PDFProblem: depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders are more commonly diagnosed in the amputee population related to changes in mobility, activities of daily living, and quality of life (Turner et al., 2020.) As the amputation population is projected to reach over 3 million Americans in the next 25 years, additional screening is imperative to identify patients at high-risk for mental health deterioration (Ziegler-Graham et al., 2018).
Methods: this was a project that included screening all patients with the Personal Health Questionnaire for Depression (PHQ-8) meeting the inclusion criteria of being admitted to 7500 Vascular Surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital with an amputation within 24 hours of their procedure. Patients were identified according to their results as mild, moderate, high, or severe, and referred to appropriate treatment, as applicable.
Results: a total of 31 patients (N = 31) were included in this project, 16 male and 15 female. On the PHQ-8, a total of 21 patients scored mild, eight scored moderate, and two scored severe. The average PHQ-8 score amongst the sample was 4.10 (SD = 2.92). The referral to treatment rate was 6.4% (n = 2) and included advanced practice provider assessment and social work referral. The independent variables of age, race, gender, and previous mental health history were not predictors of PHQ-8 risk. The type of procedure completed correlated with PHQ-8 risk score, but the results are subject to statistical error related to sample size.
Implications for practice: findings support all patients where amputation is a consideration need structured, comprehensive, and targeted depression risk screening throughout their evaluation and recovery to identify potential mental health decline
Sensory Tradeoffs in Blue Bottle Flies (Calliphora vicina)
No full textSensory Tradeoffs in Blue Bottle Flies (Calliphora vicina)
Abstract
The brain has many functions, such as processing sensory input, storing memories, or processing sensory motions. Animal sensory organs are very beneficial and advantageous in animals, especially those that have larger brains because they can process information through their sensory organs. There are many benefits to having sensory organs, although there are energetic costs to have sensory organs as well. Sensory organs can change over time and we can test this through a sensory trade off hypothesis. The investment of energy in sensory modalities and brain regions can shift through evolutionary time based on different selection pressures, which can cause an increase in one sensory organ size and a decrease in the size of another. This relationship is known as the sensory tradeoff hypothesis. Blue bottle flies (Calliphora vicina) are a great species for testing this hypothesis because they are forensically relevant, sexually dimorphic and are commercially available. I am testing the sensory tradeoff hypothesis in the sensory organs of C. vicina using light microscopy to photograph 70 flies and measuring their body morphometrics using Image J. By testing this sensory tradeoff hypothesis, we can provide insight on how animal experiences shift their sensory modalities and be able to apply this information to other animals with different life histories